Meg Medina: My name is Meg Medina. My real name is Margaret Rose Medina, which doesn't sound very Latino, does it? My family is from Cuba, but I was the first person in my family born here in the United States, and my mother wanted to name me something that sounded very, very, very American. She didn't pick Margarita Rosa. She picked Margaret Rose.

Over the years I've had lots of nicknames like Maggie, but I wasn't very fond of any of them, so when I was 12, I took charge. One day in school, I wrote the name Meg Medina on the heading of one of my papers, and I kept doing it until my teacher finally gave up correcting me. The name has stuck ever since, and the only people who still call me Margaret are my mother and the clerks at the Department of Motor Vehicles.